In the electronic manufacturing domain today, many companies spend a significant amount of money and effort to collect mountains of historical performance, condition, and usage data from production machine or equipment. The data collection method is partially semi-automatic and still relies heavily on manual entries by operators and maintenance or process technicians. Despite the fact that most production equipment is embedded in the factory network, due to different proprietary equipment interfaces (Ethernet, Serial RS232, etc.) and networking protocols, it is difficult to automate the data gathering process. In addition, the collected data is only valuable if it can be further processed, analyzed and the result can be turn into something conclusive for the entire business systems. Until now, system integrators always have to apply the “adapter technique” to integrate production equipment with all other enterprise applications. Each production machine requires a special adapter. This leads to a configuration management and maintenance nightmare, since every time a software version of the machine changes, the adapter might need to be changed as well.
“Web Services” is an emerging Internet technology concept to enable full collaboration between business functions and systems connected over the Web. Web Services allow business functions to be loosely integrated between enterprises and within enterprises. They provide a unifying programming model so that application integration inside and outside the enterprise can be done with a common approach, leveraging a common infrastructure. Thus, applications can be integrated more rapidly, easily and less expensively than ever before. Interoperability or the capacity of disparate systems to communicate and to share data seamlessly is the goal of Web Services.
Hence, there is a need to employ Web Services technology in electronic production equipment to deliver real-time operating data and production information to users.